-oyasumi- Nhk Ni Youkoso - Welcome To The Nhk - -

In the last one, the one that loops, you press the play button on a cheap boombox. A lo-fi track crackles to life. A woman's voice, soft as a razor blade, sings: "Oyasumi..."

The whisper comes from the corner of the room. Not from you. From the other you—the one who lives in the mold stain that looks like a map of Hokkaido.

Oyasumi.

Oyasumi, oyasumi.

"Did you answer your phone?"

And for one second—just one—you believe that tomorrow might be a different episode.

"The call was from my mom. Or a satellite. Same thing." -Oyasumi- NHK ni Youkoso - Welcome to the NHK -

Your neighbor's plants have grown through the wall now. Vines wrap around your ankle. They aren't plants. They are fiber-optic cables from the NHK's basement server farm. They want to broadcast your failure. 24/7. A reality show where nothing happens.

You pull the blanket over your head. The blanket is a bunker. Underneath it, the world shrinks to the size of a manga panel. You hear the old woman next door watering her plants. She waters them every morning. You imagine the roots drinking, growing, plotting. She is probably a scout for the Hikikomori Eradication Project . The water is actually a pheromone that makes you want to join a cult.

In one, you go outside. You buy a can of coffee. A girl smiles at you. You run away. In the last one, the one that loops,

Your apartment is a 4.5-tatami coffin. Sunlight, that cruel morning interrogator, slices through a gap in the blackout curtains. It lands on empty cup-noodle cups. On ashtrays shaped like tiny volcanoes. On the unfinished light novel where the protagonist has been staring at a blank page for 117 days.

The NHK fee collector hasn't come in three weeks. That's the longest he's ever waited. He's training. Next time, he'll bring a battering ram shaped like a TV license.

You reach for your prescription. Not the antipsychotics—those are for "tomorrow." The sleeping pills. The tiny white soldiers that march you into oblivion. Not from you

And you press snooze .